On Friday, Brazilian media reported that the government would likely limit its aid to a bilateral agreement with the International Monetary Fund, rather than hand cash directly to the governments in need.

Brazil isn't exactly China, which may offer as much as $100 billion in bailout money to help the EU out of its debt crisis.

The head of the EU's emergency account stopped in Beijing this week for what he said were routine meetings. About an emergency fund. OK.

Anyway, Chinese officials said they're considering investing in the fund, and the EU said they hope they will. Nobody wants to share any details of any alleged plans. The bottom line: China has lots of money, and will probably give some to the EU with strings attached.

But back to Brazil, an emerging power with an increasingly big voice on the world stage. It doesn't boast of the juggernaut economy that China wields, so it can't contribute as much. And its growth, while still strong, is no longer riding the boom it once had.

Still, Brazil is one of the few countries even being considered as eligible to offer aid.

Media reports suggested that the EU may pay a visit to President Dilma Rousseff as well, in the hopes that they will participate. (The EU said that wasn't true, so, who knows.)

But Brazil also has some pretty sensible regulations in place that prevent it from doing crazy things. Chief among them: the country is prohibited from using its reserves to buy high-risk debt. That's what the EU is selling. So, offering funds to the IMF would be one way of skirting that problem.

Rousseff said in the past, though, that she would be willing to help the EU out of its crisis, so long as it focused less on austerity measures, and more on growth and jobs. Brazil has really been trying to help out.

Brazil even suggested earlier this year that the BRICS should team up to buy some European debt all together, but Russia, China, India and South Africa, the other BRICS, weren't so interested.

A drug war in Mexico. Blossoming trade with China. Booming economies and runaway currencies. Land reform. From Mexico to the southern tip of Patagonia, ¿Que pasa? analyzes the political, social and economic forces at work in 21st-century Latin America.